An everyday tale of family and political life with a dollop of Formula One and various random thoughts on the side.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Is there a football match on, or something?

Well, as Helen Duffett reminded me on Twitter yesterday, I'm in no position to complain about people tweeting at the World Cup, after what I put my loyal and wonderful followers through during the General Election with my constant stream of things I agreed with Nick about, or things I thought were his fault.

Also, so many of my friends who do like football are going to get some rest and relaxation watching the football, which they really deserve after knocking their pans in over the last year, that I can't really begrudge them.

I suspect I will have to watch the England game tonight. Stephen is coming for dinner and although I suspect I'll be distractable with the F1 quali and Doctor Who, he'll want to watch the footie afterwards.

Yesterday we had to suffer preachy tweets from a few Scottish Labour MPs like Tom Harris and Jim Murphy urging us all to get behind England. I suspect their motivation may well have been more about having a go at the SNP than the actual football. See this from Murphy's site:

Scotland is more confident. The nationalism that defines Scotland for what its not is in retreat. Last months(his missing apostrophe, not mine)general election result proved that once and for all.

.

Yawn!

I'm afraid I can't go much further than I don't wish them any harm. Not for some great ideological hatred of the English, but more that I really just don't care. It's football that doesn't involve Inverness Caley Thistle. Why would it interest me?

Having said that, I felt a bit shamefaced yesterday because I set myself the challenge of naming as many England players as I could - and I only got to five.They were the vile Ashley Cole, John Terry, Frank Lampard (who I'd heard of more because of their antics off the field), Joe Cole and Stephen Gerrard. I should latterly add that I should have added Wayne Rooney to that list and also Rio Ferdinand and Theo Walcott, but I thought they didn't count I felt a bit mortified that I hadn't a clue who their goalie was - and he's important. Apparently, thanks to Twitter, I now know his name is David "Crazy Hair" James. Last England goalie I'd heard of was David Seaman.

I'm quite upset that the horrendous environmental disaster that is the oil spill in the Gulf has been trivialised by the press into a slanging match between Britain and the USA, just in time for the football match between them. This is too important to be treated in that way. And, to be honest, I'd rather see all those involved putting their energy into solving the problem rather than feeding the Media Beast.

As I expected, last night turned into a football fest on Twitter (although there were some parts of my feed where the much more important issues as, er, botox, and being ginger were being discussed. I did at one point turn over to France v Uruguay just to see what everyone was talking about. I barely lasted 30 seconds before I had to seek refuge in a comforting episode of Neighbours.